Tolerance of Cheating: An Analysis Across Countries

Abstract

Cheating is a serious problem in many countries. The cheater gets higher marks than deserved, thus reducing the efficiency of a country's educational system. In this study, the authors did not ask if and how often the student had cheated, but rather what the student's opinion was about a cheating situation. They investigated whether attitudes differ among students in Russia, the Netherlands, Israel, and the United States and conclude that attitudes toward cheating differ considerably between these countries. They offer various explanations of this phenomenon. In addition, they find that the student's attitude toward cheating depends on the student's educational level (high school, undergraduate, postgraduate). Finally, they show that the data from the sample can be aggregated in a natural and elegant way, and they suggest a tolerance-of-cheating index for each country.

Key Words:

• cheating
• international
• students
• tolerance
• A13
• A20
• K42

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexei V. Savvateev

Jan R. Magnus is professor of econometrics at CentER, Tilburg University, the Netherlands (e-mail: [email protected]). Victor M. Polterovich is head of the Mathematical Economics Laboratory at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute (CEMI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences and professor of economics at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow. Dmitri L. Danilov is a Ph.D. student at Tilburg University. Alexei V. Savvateev is a Ph.D. student at CEMI. The authors are grateful to professors Michael Alexeev, Itzhak Zilcha, and Tatiana Selezneva and to Dr. Serguei Kokovin; to Ph.D. students Nina Baranchuk, Andrei Bremzen, Maxim Ivanov, Serguei Izmaikov, Inna Maltseva, Mila Todorova, Alexander Tonis, and Natalya Volchkova and others for help in collecting the data: to students in four countries for filling out the questionnaires: and to three referees for helpful and constructive comments.